Pete Dougherty column: Bengals' dual tight end threat tough to ignore

Sep. 22, 2013

Tyler Eifert (left), and Jermaine Gresham / File/AP

In their 1996 opener, the Green Bay Packers hit the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with an offensive set that was relatively novel at that time.

The Packers had two tight ends, Keith Jackson and Mark Chmura, who were effective receivers, and they were on the field together for most of a crucial 7-minute stretch as the Packers ran off 17 straight points on their way to an easy 34-3 win that foreshadowed their Super Bowl title to come.

Jackson and Chmura, who finished the game with a combined seven receptions for 99 yards and three touchdowns, were making about $3 million combined at a time when the salary cap was $40.7 million. After the game, Bucs safety Martin Mayhew, who now is general manager of the Detroit Lions, told the Press-Gazette that the Packers were unusual in making that kind of commitment to the tight end position.

“That’s got to be the best tight end tandem in the league,” Mayhew said at the time. “A lot of teams would have said, ‘We have Chmura, a young guy who’s good, so let’s let Jackson go. (The Packers) didn’t, and it’s paying dividends.”

Those 1996 Packers weren’t the NFL’s first team to play two tight ends as one of their regular personnel groups, but they were far ahead of the curve in making them a regular package in their passing game. In recent years, as the NFL and its players have evolved, the two-tight end set has become significant in many NFL passing games, to the point where a handful of teams over the past few years, including the Packers’ opponent today, the Cincinnati Bengals, have used it as their primary offensive set.

Dom Capers, the Packers’ defensive coordinator, was head coach of the Carolina Panthers when they lost to the 1996 Packers in the NFC championship game. The Packers used the Jackson-Chmura tandem in relatively light doses compared to some of today’s teams, and their combined numbers for that season (68 catches, 875 yards and 10 touchdowns) are pedestrian compared to the numbers pass catchers put up today with all the rules tilted toward the passing game.

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But Capers remembers it as a difficult part of matching up with that team.

“(The 1996 Packers) had a lot of versatility to their offense,” Capers said. “When you have those guys that can catch and block and you can line them up all over the place … People are doing a lot more of it now. You talk to any offensive coach in the league, they have tremendous value. The league has gravitated more towards that because of the versatility it gives you offensively.”

NFL teams have used two-tight end sets going back decades, but through the later 1970s, they were almost exclusively used to get extra blockers on the field for short yardage and goal line, or it matched one good receiving tight end with another who was mainly a blocker.

According to Jason Cole of Yahoo.com, the first team to use two tight ends for passing appears to be the 1976 Detroit Lions.

That year, the Lions drafted tight end David Hill in the second round to eventually succeed future Pro Football Hall of Famer Charlie Sanders. So for 1976, they had two athletic tight ends who combined for 54 receptions (27 percent of the team’s catches that season) and 10 touchdown catches (half the team’s total). Their 14.7 yards a catch was excellent for a tight end of any era.

They were a one-year phenomenon, because that was Sanders’ last good season. Over the next couple of decades teams occasionally made significant use of two tight ends in its passing game, but only for a season here or there.

According to an article at footballperspective.com by Chase Stuart, who writes statistical analyses on the NFL for several websites, including the New York Times, only one team in NFL history has had tight ends as its leading and second-leading receivers: the 1998 Tennessee Titans, with Frank Wycheck (70 receptions) and former Packers tight end Jackie Harris (43). Both started every game that year.

Going back further, Stuart found several teams that had two tight ends as a prominent part of their passing games for at least a season: the 1979 Oakland Raiders (Raymond Chester and Dave Casper, who both went to the Pro Bowl); the San Diego Chargers of the mid-1980s (Kellen Winslow and Pete Holohan); the 1984 New England Patriots (Derrick Ramsey and Lin Dawson); the 1980 Houston Oilers (Casper and Mike Barber); and the Los Angeles Rams of 1985 (Tony Hunter and David Hill) and 1988 (Holohan and Damone Johnson).

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But in a league in which teams habitually steal ideas, using two tight ends in key roles in a passing game remained the exception for years. In 1994 and 1995, the New Orleans Saints’ two-tight end set (Wesley Walls and Irv Smith) was a prominent part of their offense. The Packers used it regularly in ’96 but didn’t have the talent to pass out of it regularly the next season because Jackson retired after the Super Bowl. And Tennessee used it extensively in 1998 with Wycheck and Harris.

The Indianapolis Colts were maybe the first team to use two receivers, two tight ends and a running back as their base offense for an extended time, throughout Peyton Manning’s career as their quarterback in the 2000s. Though to say they regularly played two receiving-oriented tight ends would be a stretch. Aside from the prolific Dallas Clark, their other tight ends included Marcus Pollard, Ken Dilger, Bryan Fletcher, Ben Utecht and Gijon Robinson.

But as we move from the 2000s into this decade, college football is producing more athletic tight ends than ever, and NFL teams are taking advantage.

Carolina built its passing game around receiving-oriented tight ends Jeremy Shockey and Greg Olsen in 2011. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick made an all-out commitment to two ends in 2010 when he drafted Rob Gronkowski in the second round and talented but high risk Aaron Hernandez in the fourth.

Belichick, who not coincidentally was a young assistant with the Lions when Sanders and Hill teamed up in 1976, built his offense around Gronkowski and Hernandez for three seasons, even lining up Hernandez as a lone running back on occasion. But that blew up with Hernandez’s arrest on murder charges last offseason.

Enter the Bengals, who going into last April’s draft had one of the game’s better tight ends in Jermaine Gresham, a first-round pick in 2010 who averaged 57 receptions his first three seasons. Gresham is only 25, but that didn’t stop them from drafting Notre Dame’s Tyler Eifert with their first-round pick this year, No. 21 overall.

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Now Bengals offensive coordinator Jay Gruden runs an offense with two tight ends who can make plays down the field, though scouts say Gresham also is a good blocker. According to ProFootballFocus.com, the Bengals in their first two games have gone with a 1-2 personnel grouping (one back, two tight ends and two receivers) on 50.3 percent of their offensive snaps, including 67 percent of first downs.

“You saw (Eifert’s) impact Monday night when he caught the 61-yard seam route (that set up) their first touchdown,” Capers said of Cincinnati’s game against Pittsburgh last week. “They get in that personnel group, but they can run a two-back offense putting one of (the tight ends) in the backfield; they can run a three-wide receiver offense putting one of them outside. What they’re saying is, ‘You have to make a decision as to whether you’re treating our second tight end as a fullback or a receiver or a second tight end.’ ”

And that’s the rub of matching up with two tight ends who are bona fide receivers. If a defense plays base personnel (four defensive backs), then at least one of the tight ends probably will be matched against a linebacker.

“Any time you can get a guy (i.e., a linebacker) out in space that’s not used to playing in space,” said Packers tight ends coach Jerry Fontenot, “that’s an advantageous matchup for the offensive guy.”

If the defense plays nickel (five defensive backs), then there are only two linebackers on the field, and it becomes more vulnerable to the run than it would be facing three receivers and one tight end. And even with the extra cover man on the field, there are advantages, especially in the red zone, where an athletic tight end has a huge size advantage — 4 inches or more taller and 40 pounds or more heavier — than most cornerbacks.

“You can make the argument that having more tight ends on the field is tougher (than three or four receivers),” Packers cornerback Tramon Williams said, “because you have bigger bodies, athletic guys who the only thing they have to do is get body position on you. They can make catches (in traffic) and still get down the seam on linebackers. It definitely puts stress on the defense.”

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A look at personnel around the league this year shows a trend of teams putting more resources into their tight end corps.

Last year, for instance, Indianapolis drafted tight ends Coby Fleener in the second round and Dwayne Allen in the third round. The San Francisco 49ers, who have the game’s best big-play tight end in Vernon Davis, nevertheless drafted one of the top tight end prospects this year, Rice’s Vance McDonald, in the second round.

Also this year, Philadelphia drafted Stanford’s Zach Ertz in the second round to go with veteran Brent Celek; Dallas drafted San Diego State’s Gavin Escobar in the second round to pair with Jason Witten; and Washington drafted Florida’s Jordan Reed in the third round to go with Fred Davis.

Other teams can’t match that talent level but make regular use of two receiving-oriented tight ends: St. Louis (Jared Cook and Lance Kendricks); Denver (Julius Thomas, Jacob Tamme and Virgil Green); and Houston (Owen Daniels and Garrett Graham).

The Packers were thinking similarly when they selected Andrew Quarless in the 2010 draft and D.J. Williams in 2011, even if both were fifth-round selections. The Packers had a talented young tight end in Jermichael Finley, but coach Mike McCarthy is a proponent of two-tight end personnel because of the flexibility for play calling.

Quarless missed all last season because of a knee injury but could get more playing time with Finley this year as he recovers more fully from knee reconstruction surgery. The Packers cut Williams at the end of camp.

“It’s about to be a big part of this league, a big part of offenses,” Tramon Williams said. “It’s tough to match up with. Any time they find something new in this league or a matchup problem, they definitely go to it.”